Aaron Hernandez: ‘I definitely wasn’t worried’

FOXBORO — Last week, it was Vince Wilfork who said he had no doubt the Patriots were going to come back and wipe out a 17-0 deficit.

This week, it was Aaron Hernandez who said he wasn’t worried about a 21-0 first-quarter hole against the Bills.

“How could you panic?” Hernandez asked rhetorically after New England’s 49-21 win. “You have Tom Brady, Deion Branch, Ochocinco [Chad Ochocinco] Gronkowski – best tight in the game, me, Wes Welker. You’ve got a whole bunch of people who can make plays. How can you get nervous. Tom Brady is going to put you in the right place, make a great pass and we have a lot of people who can get open.

“I definitely wasn’t worried.”

Hernandez went over 100 yards receiving for a third time this season, catching seven balls for a team-leading 138 yards, including a 39-yard high-stepping job that ended with New England’s second touchdown of the day.

“I think we’re very hard to stop,” Hernandez said. “I wouldn’t say unstoppable because we’ve been stopped but I feel like when we’re clicking and all our receivers and tight ends are playing how they can play, yeah, I feel like no one can stop us.”

But like Wilfork earlier in the week, Hernandez realizes the slow starts can’t continue or it’s a fast finish in the playoffs.

‘Once we get our offense going, its tough to stop and I feel like [the Bills] are one of the toughest teams to stop in this league,” Hernandez said. “We just have to get off to a quicker start and if we do that, we will be a lot more dangerous [in the playoffs].

‘We started off slow and lackadaisical with a lack of detail but once we get the detail down and our playmakers start making plays, we can get it going. We just start slow. It has been like that all season but it has to change now coming into the playoffs. If we change the pace up and start going faster it will be hard to stop since we have so many weapons.’